The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts by Peter Kroes & Peter-Paul Verbeek

Author:Peter Kroes & Peter-Paul Verbeek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

8.1 Introduction

Recently, a number of authors in the philosophy of technology have argued that some or all technological artifacts can qualify as moral agents. The notion of a moral agent has traditionally been reserved for human beings, and is used to refer to beings which can be held morally responsible for their actions. Such beings have the capacity to know right from wrong and are able to choose their actions freely based upon their considered moral judgments. Yet, some authors have argued, extending the notion of moral agency to technological artifacts is necessary in order to account for the moral role of (some) artifacts, which is in some cases highly similar to that of human agents. In addition, they have argued, doing so will be useful for the attribution of moral responsibility to designers.

In this paper I will evaluate various positions in favor of the view that technological artifacts can be moral agents. I will find that these positions bear important insights about the moral role of technological artifacts, but are ultimately lacking. I then develop an alternative view, which does not ascribe moral agency to artifacts, but does attribute to them important moral roles. I call this approach structural ethics. I will argue that this approach has all the benefits of approaches that ascribe moral agency to artifacts, while maintaining a distinction between the moral agency of humans and the moral roles of nonhuman entities like technological artifacts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.